And All of Us Were Actors: A Century of Light and Shadow - Gustavo Gac-Artigas - Bog

Cinematic, tragicomic, iconoclastic, And All of Us Were Actors tells the story of a near-fantastic journey through the most pivotal moments of a continent's history. A man of the theater, activist, and eternal romantic, our hero, the protagonist, spins a new Odyssey before our eyes. Traveling from Buenos Aires to Bogotá along Andean byways, he recalls Thespis, who, exiled from Athens, took to the road in a carriage and gave rise to the notion of the itinerant theater. As he travels, our hero reveals hidden paths; some lead-ing out of the mountains to immense open spaces, others to prison cells. At once hero and anti-hero, director and cast member, he passes through natural wilderness, international festivals, Chilean torture chambers, and European exile, in a magical voyage along the Cordillera and beyond, all while engaged in a running conversation with his 36-ton truck and the night sky. And All of Us Were Actors invites readers to join a feast, choosing, from among multiple textual possibilities, those morsels that will regale their senses and pique their appetites for new dishes. Dining, they follow our hero as he evolves through privation and plenty, seizing on that lucky occasion to devour a sheep's head, a gift from the gods and the Indians of the Bolivian highlands.